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When I grew up, I had a passion for music. I played several instruments and performed a bunch of times. I built my own speakers and guitar pedals and played with tons of audio equipment.

Eventually, I gravitated toward a career in engineering — building, innovating and making solutions for internet users around the world. Now, I lead the Opera Coast team.

Rap for Opera Coast

Andrey Goryunov shares my passion for music and technology. He grew up listening to both Russian and American rappers in a city known as “Russia’s Roswell”, since a Soviet missile reportedly shot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) nearby.

He started rapping in 2004, mostly for fun. Within a couple of years, he was regularly attending rap battles and even won a few.

Last year, he won a video-review contest for Opera Coast that was hosted by the popular vlogger Wylsacom. The competition elicited hundreds of video submissions, and many were creative and fun to watch — especially the ones that our lawyers frowned upon.

Andrey’s little miracle

Andrey made his video with a low-budget “studio” consisting of a KRK Rokit 8 acoustic system and a Mac with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound card. His contest win demonstrates that you don’t need a ton of equipment to make your mark.

Behind every Opera product, you will find people with a passion for what they do. Our products and innovations, including tabs, Speed Dial and Opera Mini’s compression are the result of a bunch of regular, but talented people using simple tools to develop what they believe is right for the internet.

You can easily recognize the same passion in Andrey. And, it won him a trip to Norway. His first time on a plane, in fact. He said it was a little miracle for him.

Andrey’s story was a great learning experience for the Opera team. He taught us that if you work with passion, there’s some exciting stuff ahead.